


the art of being undone

by wolfsan11



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Desperation, Gen, Grief, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Minor Character Death, Not quite sad ending, Regrets, Sort Of, Supernatural mash up, but also sad ending, but no actual demon, demon summoning ritual, how tf do i tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 18:54:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13642413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfsan11/pseuds/wolfsan11
Summary: Somewhere out on a deserted crossroad, a young girl seeks to revive her dead brother, no matter the cost.





	the art of being undone

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly don't know how to tag this. Anyway, I belted this out in about an hour, I hope you enjoy? :D

“Don't.”

Katie springs away from the hole in the ground, a small box slipping from her hands in her shock. It lands on the mound of dirt she's made, but, thankfully, does not burst open.

She looks up, heart rabbiting at the sight of a man who certainly hadn't been there a moment before. It's too dark to make out his features, the streetlights broken and useless, shrouding them both in shadows. The clouds are thick tonight, moonlight patchy and sparse. The cityscape has been left far behind her in the three-hour drive, and there's no one else around.

It’s why she'd chosen these crossroads in particular.

“Who are you?” she demands.

“It doesn't matter,” he replies, and before she can do little more than bristle, “Whoever you're trying to bring back, it won't work.”

She goes still at that, the breath punched out of her. How could he kno—

She recovers belatedly, puts on the act of a raised eyebrow, an incredulous smile.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I know that box contains some things you'd rather not admit to acquiring. Graveyard dirt?”

Katie staggers back a step. The man continues, relentless.

“The bone of a black cat? A photo of the person you los—”

“Shut up,” she says, voice tight and terse. Mostly because she can't bear to hear it. Mostly because, despite what she's doing, she still sits atop a throne of denial and despair and she knows it well.

“So what if I'm trying to . . . To bring him back. Whether it works or not, I gotta try. It's not any of your concern.”

“It is,” the man says quietly. “Because it won't work the way you think it does.”

“But it _does_ work, then,” she says, smiling in triumph. The man doesn’t take the bait.

“It does. But for a price.”

A price.

Katie wants to laugh. What did that even _matter_ ? As though the man could know, as though he could _possibly_ know how far she's willing to go when it's for Matt. Matt, who'd never deserved to go out the way he did, whose loss was as fresh now as it had been six months back, who’d deserved far more than an empty casket and empty condolences said to empty-eyed grievers; _Matt_ , who'd had _everything_ going for him until—

She'd been so proud. She'd been so proud of him. And none of it meant anything if he wasn't here anymore.

“I don't care,” she says, and her voice comes out thinner than she likes, more strained than she's happy with. She reels it in, swallowing. Swipes an impatient fist over her eyes. “I don't _care_ . I have to do this. I can’t give up on him, I _need_ him.”

Silence.

Will he leave it alone now? Will he let her get on with what she must do? Will he relent?

“Please, don't do this.”

She blinks. The man sounds weary, pained. Grief-swept and laid bare, desperate to make her understand.

“Who _are_ you?” she asks again.

He takes a step forward, two, three, four, until he's standing in the lone source of light: a strip of moonlight that silvers the roads and puts a shine to haunted, dark violet eyes.

She doesn't recognize him, but there's something familiar to him, and to the look on his face.

“Keith,” he says, simply. “My name is Keith. You stopped by Sal’s for directions.”

And she remembers, a brief encounter in a bright-lit store by the highway turnoff, not far from here. The averted eyes and shake of a head in response to her questions.

“You showed up alone and white-faced,” he says, “And when you asked the cashier and the others about the nearest crossroads, I knew what it meant. _Trust_ me when I say, you don't wanna do this.”

Katie stands there, palms turning hot and sweaty, nails gritty with the soil she'd dug up from the center of the dirt road. A chill slides down her spine as the wind sweeps her hair from her face.

“Why?” It splinters the air, as sudden as a gunshot. She trembles, everything inside of her crashing. Her bravado, her determination. Her faith in herself and all the research she's done to get here. “ _Why_?

Keith looks at her, and there's something horrible in the tight line of his mouth. There's sorrow in the bunched eyebrows, unhappiness in his squared shoulders.

“Because I tried it too,” he whispers, and somehow it still carries, perhaps in the magic that lilts through the air of this particular crossroad. “I summoned a demon and I made a pact and it—it cost both of us too much . . . he was upset. It wasn’t up to me to make that decision and I've never regretted anything more since then.”

Katie stares at him and sees only truth speaking.

There's a flicker in the corner of her eyes, but when she turns her head to look, there's nothing. She returns her gaze to Keith to find him watching her sadly.

“You think this will fix things, but it won't. I promise you, it won't,” he says. “You have to . . . You _have to_ move on. You have to bear it and keep bearing it. Because that's what they'd want.”

Her chest hitches on a stuttered breath. She clenches her eyes shut.

“Whoever he is . . .  He wouldn't be happy if you brought him back. Not with what it’ll take from you, and from him.”

Keith falls silent and Katie keeps still, and the darkness settles between them as the moonlight fades once more behind rolling clouds.

“There's no other way?” she asks in a gasping breath, and hates how childish it sounds.

“No,” Keith says, not sparing her another moment of hope. “There isn’t.”

Katie stands there. And slowly nods, her insides shaking apart

“Fine,” she says. “Okay. Fine. _Fine_.”

 

* * *

 

Keith stays with her for as long as it takes for her to pull herself together and trudge back to the car. The hole is filled up, an empty box buried beneath. She grabs the photo and nothing else as she leaves.

She only looks up once as she drives away, Keith a receding, lonely figure in her rearview mirror, and for a moment she thinks she sees someone else too. Someone tall and broad-shouldered, standing close enough to Keith that their silhouettes appear to merge.

She blinks and suddenly they're both gone, the roads as empty as they’d been when she'd gotten there. It sends a rattle of unease in her ribs and she floors it.

By the time she hits the highway, her hands are shaking too much to drive safely.

She pulls over to the shoulder, grabbing at the photo to clutch it tight, fingering the ragged edge where she'd torn herself out of the picture. The memory of Matt beams up at her, glasses perched on a pinkened nose, arm inching past the edge of the tear, where her figure had been.

She turns it over, to the pencilled letters on the back, half there, half gone.

 

_—tt + Pidge_

_—tember 20xx_

 

Pidge feels her eyes burning, feels a tightening around her throat. She sets the photo in her lap, blinking hard around the tears.

Maybe it was time to let go.

The sob breaks from her mouth and she folds herself over the steering wheel and lets herself grieve.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://wolfsan11.tumblr.com) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/wolfsan11)


End file.
